clog (“color log”)

Little Ruby On Rails debugging gem for writing colorized output to log file.

Because clog is all about color

here’s a blog posting with color pictures

Usage

> gem install clog

Rails 2x, in environment.rb

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  config.gem 'clog'
end

If you want to change the defaults in environment.rb you might have to require the gem:

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  config.gem 'clog'
  require 'clog'
  Clog.colors(:black, yellow)    
end

Rails 3x, in Gemfile

gem "clog"

You change the defaults in environment.rb just like rails 2x

No argument outputs a “flag”

clog

Single argument

clog var

Tagged argument

First argument must be a symbol, which it outputs before second argument.

clog :var, var

{:one=>1, :two=>2, :three=>3}.each do |k,v|
  clog k, v
end

Multiple arguments

Will output each on its own line.

clog Object.new, Kernel, RUBY_VERSION, :a_symbol

Changing color

Clog.colors(background, forground=white)

Choices- :black, :red, :green, :yellow, :blue, :magenta, :cyan, :white

Clog.colors(:blue)
Clog.colors(:black, yellow)

Default is red background, white foreground.

Max width

clog figures out when its appropriate to place additional information (line number, calling method, etc) on the right of the output or below it on the next line. Think of maxwidth as representing the width of your terminal window. The default is 150

Clog.maxwidth(100)

Changes

version 0.2.0 now outputs during testing (not to log but to shell)

version 0.2.1 does the opposite of the above line. Tests now have too much formatting and output, so lets log to test.log if we’re running in a rails env